#1373 – The Story from Ajaccio

So, as I said before, I am in Ajaccio, Corsica this week for work to attend an international conference. And so here is the story about my week in Ajaccio…

Corsica & The Restaurants

First of all, the reason for me being here is for the conference which was held from Wednesday until Friday. And I just arrived in Ajaccio on Tuesday evening. I quite regretted my decision to leave the island tomorrow (Saturday) morning at first because I thought then I would not have any time at all to explore the island whose, allegedly, beaches are beautiful. But then, apparently on Friday the presentation session finished earlier than the previous two days, so I had the time to go to one beautiful beach near Ajaccio (about 15 km away), La Parata. And, indeed, it was so beautiful!!😀

The beautiful La Parata

Btw, as usual, before leaving, I did a small survey about the local Corsican dish and I got a few names. However, it turned out to be quite difficult to find a restaurant that sold those things! I mean, it is much much much easier to find a pizzeria here!😯 But on Friday evening I went out with some other participants for a dinner; and one of the professors had a list of restaurants that he heard were nice Corsican restaurants so we went to one. And it was, indeed, delicious!

The Presentation

First of all, when I received the conference schedule a few weeks ago, I was very happy that my presentation was assigned in day one so I could be stress-free for the rest of the conference, hahaha😆 . And how did it go? It went pretty well I think. I knew I prepared myself pretty well so I was feeling quite confident. The allocated time for the presentation was super short btw, only 15 minutes including Q&A; so the preparation was actually quite a challenge since I had to pack everything I wanted to say in just around 12 minutes of presentation!

Btw, of course I had to dress accordingly for the occasion; and this was one of the reasons why I bought a new suit a few weeks ago.

Suit up!

The Conference

The conference was a nice conference. Okay, obviously I won’t talk about the topic nor the research presented in the conference here; and I will just talk about the more general ambience of it.

I must say that upon finding out the registration fee, I thought it was quite expensive (well, in the end TU Delft paid for it though so I didn’t have to pay for it myself; but still, from what I knew, this price was amongst the quite expensive price for a conference). But apparently it came with a reason: partially because the conference provided lunch for the entire duration of three days; and by lunch they were actual proper three course meal of French food! :shock: Okay, even though it wasn’t the best French food I had ever had, it was still not bad…

An entree menu

A main course

A dessert

Then on Thursday evening, they organized an optional conference dinner (for an extra fee). And of course I joined the dinner as it provided a good opportunity to talk with other participants.

Also, apparently, some of my colleagues (who are working on different projects but are funded through the same research funding) were also going to the same conference! Hahaha😆 . We did not plan to submit our papers to this conference together but apparently we did! So it was quite a nice coincidence! Haha😀 . Furthermore, what was even much stranger than that, some people from my tennis lesson this period apparently also went to the conference!😯 I mean, what are the odds? Out of all possible research fields in TU Delft, out of all possible conferences in the entire world, out of all possible tennis lessons, we met in the tennis lesson and actually went to the same conference! Hahaha😆 . It was so weird!